Page 25 of Brutal Alpha Bully

And it’s true. I’ve always kept her in the loop. Always been upfront and honest with her about the things going on. When people on our block didn’t like us, I told her as much. I made it clear what would happen if she mentioned magic at school. All of that was clear.

So it must be frustrating for her now to not know what’s going on with Xeran. To not understand why I don’t trust him.

But of all the truths I’ve shared with her, none of them have ever been about what happened back then. With the girls, my friends. With Xeran.

With Nora herself.

And I still can’t bring myself to tell her the truth now, so I decide to settle on something else I know to be true. Sitting down heavily on the bed, I look up at her through my sleepy eyes.

“Nora, everything about this situation is temporary. Xeran is going back to—well, wherever he went when he left. We’ll make our plan to get out of Silverville, too. I don’t want you to get attached to him, to this place, because nothing about this is going to last. Okay?”

“What do you mean,when he left? Why did he leave?”

I bite my tongue. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

She opens her mouth, sucking in a sharp breath, and I expect her to call me out on that, to point out that I’ve said it before as a way of pushing the conversation to another time, never picking it up again.

But she doesn’t. Instead, she snaps her mouth shut, takes a deep breath, and turns to change into her pajamas.

I sit on the edge of the bed and try to calm my racing heart. Try to forget about the way Xeran looked at me when he turned around and saw me standing there on the stairs.

Nora crawls into the opposite side of the bed, careful not to touch me as she curls into the blankets. I lie down, mind filled with thoughts of Xeran.

Thoughts of him then. Thoughts of him now.

Thoughts of how much he wants to know about what happened back then.

Sometimes, no matter how hard I try to keep them at bay, the details come back, anyway. I see Xeran back then, his teenage self a little softer. Standing alone in that hallway, just him and me.

For a stupid, stupid moment, I thought he was going to kiss me.

“I told you not to talk to me at school,” he hissed, his head tipped down, his voice not unkind but not gentle, either. Even as he said it, the only thing I could focus on was his other hand, pinning my hip against the locker, the sparks running through my body at the frisson of it.

“Sorry,” I’d murmured, but my eyes had closed of their own accord, giving into the way my body melted for him.

It had been exactly three weeks since we first started meeting up. Always somewhere secret, and always on his terms. I understood why—it’s not like Xeran was the first person who didn’t want to be seen with me at school. I was decidedly devoid of friendships. If my family name and affiliation weren’t bad enough, thanks to my brother onlyrecently making a name for himself in the drug-dealing game, the fact that I accidentally cast a spell during a school assembly had sealed the deal.

I’d gotten suspension and then detention for weeks and weeks. My mother wept silently in the car on the way home the day it happened, imploring me to never do something like that again.

Today was the first time in my life that I directly disobeyed her.

“Fuck, Phina,” Xeran said, and when he spoke, the breath of his words fluttered over my face. I was so gone for him, so astounded by the fact that this amazing boy from this amazing family would want anything to do with me. That his eyes could linger on me the way they did.

That he had chosen me. That somehow, the body I existed in seemed to serve him well. It was also the first time I was starting to appreciate that body, focusing more on feeding it, making sure I didn’t skip meals, even when it was harder to find something at a home that couldn’t care less about nourishing me.

A door slamming at the end of the hall had him springing back from me, his eyes blazing like I was the one who had snagged his wrist, pulled him around, kept him back.

“Don’t fucking follow me,” he spat, shaking his head and backing up, even as his eyes lingered, falling to the hem of my skirt. Loving the feeling of his eyes on me, I curled my fingers only slightly, creating a breeze from nowhere that ruffled it upward to show off more thigh, more skin.

Xeran swallowed hard, those blue eyes locked on me for a moment longer before he forced himself to turn and walk away.

As always, after seeing him at school, my heart was pounding in confusion. Alone, he was tender, sweet. Anywhere near the school grounds, he could be a little rough with me, pushing me against the lockers.

Not to mention bullying me.

Xeran was never loud, but quiet with his ruthlessness. A muttered comment to his friends that I couldn’t hear, though I always felt the pain from their laughter. The way their eyes would swing to me, assessing.

Even then, I knew Xeran hated that he was interested in me, even just physically. And he took it out on both of us.

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